Do it Justice: Ultimate Chicken Horse

So many great games fall under the radar ... for a variety of reasons. It's often down to things like a lack of PR and marketing. But not always, of course. It can come down to so many things ...

Maybe it's a niche genre. Maybe, for some unknown reason, it just doesn't click with audiences (Sunset Overdrive is a good example of this, although it found a bigger audience as an early GamePass game).

This article is the first in a series about some 1minus1's video game favourites. :) They aren't reviews. They are just a bit of info of our views about what makes them special. Our own tiny contribution to keeping them in people's minds, written purely for the hell of it.

We give you ...

Ultimate Chicken Horse

It's never going to be particularly fashionable. It's never going to command the size of audience of something like AAA titles should do. But it can capture and grow a very loyal fanbase and – next step up – become something of a cult title. Ultimate Chicken Horse has the potential for that. If enough people had heard of it in the first place.

It starts with the title; it's utterly memorable by pure virtue of its ridiculousness. Just that one title/phrase is enough to get the kids to ask "What is that, that sounds HILARIOUS!".

And it is.

Ultimate Chicken Horse is a 2D party game where you create levels – solo, and with up to 4 player local and online co-op – competing against each other to navigate those levels you create together. Making your way through in the most challenging way you can, as fast as you can, to get to the finish line.

The key moment when you realise you are playing something special is the way in which you are introduced to the UI. It's immediately fun and competitive (assuming you are playing against someone else either locally or online). That competitiveness runs through every aspect of the game. But what's clever about it is not just the way that it brings you into the game. It's the way it makes you compete to pick items to place in the level, and how it blends the need to collaborate with the others players with an almost simultaneous need to compete against those same players. It's pretty unique as game experiences go. You're on a timer, so it remains pretty fast moving in most if not all gameplay.

It's an incredibly fun experience; fun enough in fact to generate laugh out loud moments – as much at yourself as your competitors. Even better on some of the levels the community has created, there are some incredibly inventive creations – some of which you would be forgiven for thinking had been created by game professionals – with clearly many hours of love having gone into them. The best of thee levels require collaboration to complete, which brings another element of fun to the experience.

The graphics are all they need to be; charming and fun with a fantastic hand-drawn feel to them. The character animations are cute and funny as all hell.

It's very cheap at ￡11.99 and available on Playstation, XBox and PC. It would be a great one for Game Pass so hopefully some day it appears there if it hasn't already.

A cult favourite in the making.